Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lancelot" data-source="post: 5391022" data-attributes="member: 30022">I've been playing and DMing 25+ years, and it took me three attempts to get through the bonus downloadable Solo Adventure. The final encounter with the "Big Bad" is extremely difficult unless you get lucky.Similarly, I ran myself through the adventure in the DM's book using a well-crafted 4 PC party, just to test the capabilities of new Essentials PCs. Again, I rate myself as a tactical expert in the game (I should be, after this many years). I was taking fairly optimal actions every round, and achieving reasonably good rolls. The party still TPK'ed in the final encounter.I've found a lot swings on the initial initiative roll. Get locked into a corner by something nasty, and you're in for a world of hurt. Your rogue can't get optimal positioning, the defender can't lock stuff down. Plus, some of the creatures are hitting very hard. Several of the monsters in these "introductory" adventures can hit for 15+ damage in a single attack (bloodying a defender, or nearly killing anything else), and there's at least one that can drop enough damage to knock out a full-strength character in a single round.On the flipside, you need focus fire and good rolls from the PCs to achieve a similar effect.I've noticed this in a lot of recent WotC releases. I think complaints about creature lethality have swung the pendulum too far the other way. Recent Dark Sun releases highlight this. The introductory adventure for Dark Sun features a 1st encounter with multiple (level 1) creatures that have a 4d6+4 damage attack, usable three times each in the encounter. If two of those flank a PC and both hit, the PC is likely killed outright (even if neither crits). I had a group of 15+ years experience players TPK against that encounter simply because they lost initiative. Two of them were dropped in the first round, and the others swiftly followed.So, my suggestion? It's the DM's role to adjust the difficulty to suit. The default these days seems to be "pretty hard, unless you're quite expert with the game". I'd suggest lowering monster damage or fudging some dice rolls if you're trying to teach new, younger players.</blockquote>

Verification